Welsh Girl living in Scotland who loves to cook and eat!

February 11, 2018May 19, 2018

Slow Cooked Roast Lamb

My husband came home from Tescos the other day looking particularly smug and pleased with himself. He doesn’t often shop in Tescos as I do virtually all the food shopping and cooking in our relationship. For me, cooking is fun and a hobby, not a chore. He told me he had bought me a present and when I opened my eyes he had placed a large joint of lamb in my palms.

He knows me to well as food gifts are always welcome and usually “spark joy” in me in true “KonMari” style! The unexpected food offering might however have had something to do with me mentioning the word diet a few times earlier in the week…..but “C’est la vie”, you only live once!

Roast Lamb is my husband’s all time favourite dinner and is popular in both of our Welsh families. I have to say however, that I have also eaten some pretty amazing lamb in Greece when I holidayed there in my 20’s, slow roasted all day in traditional wood burning Aga Ovens. I cooked our half shoulder of lamb long and slow for over 6 hours in my slow cooker as I don’t have an Aga but OMG it tasted AWESOME! The beauty of the slow cooker is that you can put the meat in the pot and go away to do something else for several hours, safe in the knowledge it won’t burn.

It’s so easy to cook roast lamb. I picked some fresh rosemary from the garden and stuffed into tiny slits I made in the joint with a sharp knife. I also tucked in a few fresh garlic cloves for extra flavour. You can rub the surface with some olive oil for oven roasting but as my slow cooker keeps meat joints nice and moist, I didn’t bother

I then put half a pint of vegetable stock and 2 peeled onions, cut in half, into the base of a slow cooker. I placed the meat on top and slow cooked for 5 hours on High then 1 to 2 hours on Low. Alternatively you could cook on the Low setting all day….except we couldn’t wait that long!

We both had to leave the house and go the gym while it was cooking as the smell was driving us NUTS!

You can also cook a half shoulder of lamb in a covered roasting dish in the oven. Turn the heat up to 200C for the first 20 min then down to 170C for 3 hours, removing the lid for the last half an hour to brown the meat.

Larger joints of meat will take longer to cook so follow the pack instructions for a guide to cooking times.

It smelt and tasted incredible!

I served with oven roasted potatoes, carrots, celery and mushrooms plus a few homegrown beans which I had stashed in my freezer. I also served up the caramelized onions from the base of the slow cooker and they had an incredible flavour, cooked in all the meat juices.